specially told that the Maharajah and the pig were to be in the
middle, with the rest nowhere and nothing between. Other
injunctions were as clear, and as clearly disregarded. Armour, like
the Maharajahs, had simply 'REfuse' to abandon his premeditated
conceptions of how the thing should be done. And here was the
result, for the laughter of the gods and anybody else that might
see. I asked Kauffer unguardedly if no sort of pressure could be
brought to bear upon these chaps to make them pay up. His face
beaming with hope and intelligence, he suggested that I should
approach the Foreign Office in his behalf; but this I could not
quite see my way to. The coercion of native rulers, I explained,
was a difficult and a dangerous art, and to insist, for example,
that one of them should recognize his own complexion might be to run
up a disproportionate little bill of our own. I did, however,
compound something with Kauffer; I hope it wasn't a felony. 'Look
here,' I said to Kauffer, 'this isn't official, you know, in any
way, but how would it do to write that scamp Kandore a formal letter
regretting that the portrait does not suit him, and asking his
permission to dispose of it to me? Of course it is yours to do as
you like with already, but that is no reason why you shouldn't ask.
I should like it, but the Porcha tiger beat will do as well.'

Kauffer nearly fell upon my neck.

'That Kandore will buy it to put in one bonfire first,' he assured
me, and I sincerely hoped for his sake that it would be the case.

'Of course it's understood,' I bethought me to say, 'that I get it,
if I do get it, at Mr. Armour's price. I'm not a Maharajah, you
know, and it isn't a portrait of me.'